Part 10 – Wednesday afternoon
As I exited the hotel, Glenda Roberts called on my cell phone. I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, but this call would be important.
"Good day, Glenda," I started.
"William, how are you?"
"I'm doing just fine. It's already been a very busy week," I answered.
"No doubt," Glenda agreed. "I was hoping you could find time in your schedule to meet with me tomorrow afternoon? I have something very important to discuss with you."
"Of course, I'll gladly shuffle some appointments around for you. But is this a discussion we can begin now?"
"Not fully, William," Glenda answered. "But I do need to test the waters with you a bit."
"Ok," I prodded.
"I am in the process of negotiating with another firm," she informed me. "Obviously I will attempt to bring as many of my clients with me and I fully expect to remain the legal representative for most of them."
Why did I have a feeling there was a bit of a threat underlying that sentence?
"I've already gotten acceptance to bring two associates along with me and I was counting on you being one of them," she continued.
"I appreciate that, Glenda," I answered, "and am pleased that my work has impressed you, but I have to warn you that I already have several offers that I'm entertaining. While I would very much like to continue to work with you, you'll have to give me a competitive offer."
Glenda took a few seconds before responding. "I see," she said. "With the market the way it is, you must know that I'll have my pick of just about any associate out there."
"Yes," I agreed. "Just about any ..."
"I see," she repeated. "Well, would you still like to meet with me?"
"Of course," I readily agreed. "Even if you don't have an offer for me I'll always want to meet and talk with you."
"Fine, then. The Beanery at Maxwell and Greene? At two o'clock?"
"I'll be there," I said.
"Good. See you then," she replied. And that was that. I had a feeling I may have thrown a fly in her ointment. It will be interesting to see what kind of offer she can put together by tomorrow. And I wondered what firm she was joining?
The chauffer who drove me and Karen to the hotel had seen me and was waiting for my call to finish. I waved him off, though. I wasn't that far from my place, maybe a thirty minute walk. It was a relatively nice day out, and I found myself thinking a long walk would clear my head.
Alas, that didn't happen. When I wasn't thinking about my job options I was thinking about Karen. In fact, the second half of my walk was pretty much ruined as I thought of nothing else. I was in exactly the type of situation I swore I'd never let myself be trapped in. If no one else found out about the forged document, then everyone was in the clear. I didn't get the money, the firm wouldn't make a claim against it, Karen wouldn't face any legal complications for forgery, there would be no questionable hidden accounts that could spur an investigation of any kind, and I could forget this ever happened.
But if I had an obligation to report the forgery, either to the SEC or to the state bar, or both, then that would be the first step in a long chain of events that could lead to my complete ruin. And it didn't matter one lick that I hadn't done a thing wrong myself. The mere appearance of wrongdoing would be so strong that I doubt I could prove my innocence. And what if after researching the issues, I found that I had a moral obligation to report but not a legal obligation to do so? Would I voluntarily subject myself to the mess that was to follow when, technically, I was not compelled to do so? And what kind of lawyer would I be if I took the easy way out? What kind of person would I be?
The more I thought about it, the angrier and more distraught I felt. The real possibility of taking everything I'd worked so long and hard for, the sacrifices I'd made, the relationships I'd squandered or missed out on, and the myriad options that would be denied to me in the future, all for naught because of someone else thinking they knew what I wanted or needed better than I did. All of it lost because a proper choice of mine had been overridden by others. It made me want to throw up.
And, unfortunately, that was the mood I was in when I returned home that afternoon.
When I entered my apartment I could hear Jaycee on her cell phone in her room. "Ok, he's here. I gotta go. ... Yes, I'll call you later."
By the time I had hung up my jacket, Jaycee had stormed into the living room and she did not look happy to see me.
"What did you do, Will?" she demanded.
"Leave it alone, Jaycee," I warned. "I'm not in the mood."
"Leave it alone? Karen said you destroyed her for getting you five million dollars. Is this true?"
"Jaycee," I warned again. "Sit down and be quiet. You don't know what you're talking about."
"No, not this time Will," Jaycee argued. "You need to tell me just what the fuck happened at that meeting."
I took a big breath to try to control myself. "At the meeting, it was brought to my attention that Karen had gone behind my back and forged my signature on a document when I had clearly and expressly stated that I would not invest in the Beck Fund."
"So now you hate her for trying to give you five million dollars," she paraphrased.
"Jaycee ..." I started, but for the life of me didn't know where to go in this discussion.
"It's five million dollars, Will!" Jaycee insisted. "Do you know what I'd do to get my hands on five million dollars???"
"No," I answered, "tell me."
"What?" she asked.
"What would you be willing to do for five million dollars?" I demanded.
"I don't know, a lot," Jaycee admitted.
"Really? I'm finding myself in the Jaycee market, what are you offering?" I asked.
"What?" Jaycee responded.
"Let's face it, you agreed to be my sex slave for a lot less than five mil," I sneered. "Plus, I know what dire financial straits you're in, so let's start things off low. How much would five thousand dollars get me? You could really use five grand. You've got a lot of bills to pay and no steady employment in sight. So tell me, how much Jaycee can I get for five Gs?"
"Fuck you, Will!" Jaycee cried.
"I'm already getting that, whenever I want," I taunted. "So you'll have to do better. What else are you offering?"
"All women are either sluts or whores, is that right?" yelled Jaycee.
"Hey, you brought it up. Now we're just negotiating over the price. Unlike you, there are parts of me that are not for sale. Not for any price!" I yelled.
"It's easy to say you've got morals when you've got lots of money and opportunities. The world looks a lot different when those things are taken away from you. So excuse me if right now I don't care about your vaunted moral code!" Jaycee yelled back.
"What? You don't think I knew I was turning down millions when I told Beck I couldn't invest with him? I knew exactly what I was doing! Karen had no right ..."
"I don't care!" Jaycee cried. "I don't. All of that is beside the point. Karen is one of the best things that ever happened to you. You have to go get her back!"
"Have to? Have to?!?" I screamed. "No! You don't have the right to make those decisions for me. Nobody has that right. Not you, not anybody else! Only I say what I have to do. You don't ever get to tell me to do anything!"
After that it got a little hazy. You'll have to forgive me for jumping out of the conversation here. I know that's a writing no-no. But I can't tell you exactly what I screamed back at her. To be honest, I don't think I was fully conscious. I haven't lost control like that since I was a young teenager. While I can't tell you what I yelled, I do know I just kept yelling for some time, not giving Jaycee a chance to interrupt or respond.
A big part of my rage was the unexpressed anger I felt at Karen and what she'd done. I couldn't fully vent that anger towards her at the time because of Beck and his group's presence, and so that anger was taking its first opportunity to escape. Looking back on this event now, I'm pretty sure that a lot of old frustrations from my relationship with Hannah were also boiling up to the surface, finally breaking through after years of suppression. At least, that's my two-cents worth of amateur psycho-babble self-analysis. But I still don't think this eruption would have happened if it had been anyone other than Jaycee confronting me. Because she was my purported 'sex slave,' part of me was enraged that she dared to order me to do anything. That's not what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to tell her what to do. So, again in my after the fact self-analysis, I think the fact that my 'sex slave' was challenging me was the trigger that set me off.
I do need to state right now, before I say anything else, that I did not place a hand against Jaycee in anger. But it was close. And I remain deeply ashamed over how close it was. The fact that I had been 'punishing' Jaycee with spankings meant that a part of me was tempted to 'punish' Jaycee for daring to confront me. I'm rather sickened by that. I now have firsthand experience with the old saying of 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' I was so angry that my 'fight or flight' response kicked in, and some powerful part of me demanded instant physical action. What little control I had over myself successfully redirected that focus away from Jaycee.
I picked up a table lamp and, with a great primal scream, hurled it clear across the room at the glass door leading to my balcony. The lamp had a heavy clay base. Throwing it such a distance is a terribly impressive feat, if I do say so. While the lamp base didn't shatter the glass, it did a good job of punching a hole into it, with cracks splintering out from the impact point like a spider web.
That burst of physical exertion was the last, big expression of my rage, though my mind stayed focused on the essence of that emotion. My 'normal' self slowly emerged to regain control as if swimming up from the deep depths of my soul. I gasped in great breaths of air as the adrenalin slowly bled off.
I suddenly realized that Jaycee was no longer with me.
